Over the Top? |

Billy Crocker might have thought “at words poetic, I’m so pathetic”, but he was at no loss for words once he started to sing:

You’re the top! You’re the Colosseum,
You’re the top! You’re the Louvre Museum,
You’re a melody from a symphony by Strauss,
You’re a Bendel bonnet, a Shakespeare sonnet,
You’re Mickey Mouse.
You’re the Nile, You’re the Tow’r of Pisa,
You’re the smile on the Mona Lisa.

We just don’t speak like this now – or ever.
We would think anyone who did was over the top (…or part of a 1930’s musical).

Some couples multiply cute terms of endearment (“buttercup”, “sugar pie” etc); some do not.
Recently Eileen and I had dinner with a family, including a delightful young couple. During conversation, it came out that the male of the couple was quite averse to any cute terms like this.

In any case, after some years of overuse, “honey” and “buttercup” tend to become empty phrases.
I suppose for that reason my wife and I no longer refer to each other as “Eilie-poo” and “Kenny-poo” (keep that one to yourself if you don’t mind).
Though, we have found it useful at times – especially after a time of feeling estranged from each other – to sit down and write down all the good qualities we see in each other. Nothing negative, just the good.
Not surprisingly, that can be quite an exercise after feeling somewhat distant from one another. But it is a very worthwhile exercise.

But even then, our lists of one another never seem to rise to the heights (or maybe, sink to the depths) of Billy Crocker’s.

David

I was thinking of this reading Psalm 18 again recently:

The Lord is my rock
my fortress
my deliverer;
my God,
my strength, in whom I will trust;
my shield
the horn of my salvation,
my stronghold.
…I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised…

Really?
How did David come up with an effusive list like that?
Did he think it through? Did he mean every word of it?

The clue is in the first verse:

I will love You, O Lord, my strength…

…The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer;
…My God, my strength, in whom I will trust;
…My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
…I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised;

David loved the Lord!

We talk about the one we love.
How much we love someone comes out in how readily we sing their praises.
When we are feeling estranged, or distant, it is hard to think of good things to say.
But when we really love someone, we want to tell others how we feel about them.

George Gillespie

Heatherington, in his History of the Westminster Assembly tells of George Gillespie, one of the youngest commissioners to that Assembly, and later (briefly) its moderator:

“In one of the earliest meetings of the committee, the subject of deliberation was to frame an answer to the question, ‘What is God?’
Each man felt the unapproachable sublimity of the divine idea suggested by these words; but who could venture to give it expression in human language! All shrunk from the too sacred task in awestruck, reverential fear.
At length it was resolved, as an expression of the committee’s deep humility, that the youngest member should make the attempt. He modestly declined, then reluctantly consented; but begged that the brethren would first unite with him in prayer for divine enlightenment.
Then in slow and solemn accents he thus began his prayer: –
‘O God, thou art a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in thy being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.’
When he ceased, the first sentence of his prayer was immediately written by one of the brethren, read, and adopted, as the most perfect answer that could be conceived, – as, indeed, in a very sacred sense, God’s own answer, given to prayer and in prayer, descriptive of himself.”

The story may be apocryphal (Alexander Whyte thought so) but hardly has anyone ever come up with a succinct answer to the question ‘What is God?’ better than:

God is a spirit,
infinite, eternal, and unchangeable,
in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.

George Gillespie loved God.
No wonder his thoughts of God overflowed when he communed with God in prayer.

Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards was another whose thoughts of God overflowed as he meditated on the Word of God in prayer.

At one time, meditating on those words in I Timothy 1:17, “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever, Amen” he records:

“…there came into my soul, and was as it were diffused through it, a sense of the glory of the Divine Being; a new sense, quite different from any thing I ever experienced before. Never any words of Scripture seemed to me as these words did. I thought with myself, how excellent a Being that was, and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God, and be rapt up to him in heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in him for ever! I kept saying, and as it were singing, over these words of scripture to myself; and went to pray to God that I might enjoy Him, and prayed in a manner quite different from what I used to do; with a new sort of affection.”

On another occasion, as he rode out into the woods for his health, and having alighted from his horse “in a retired place to walk for divine contemplation and prayer”, he tells of the wonder of his view of Christ:

“…I had a view, that for me was extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God, as mediator between God and man, and His wonderful, great, full, pure and sweet grace and love, and meek and gentle condescension. This grace that appeared so calm and sweet, appeared also great above the heavens. The person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent, with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thought and conception — which continued, as near as I can judge, about an hour; which kept me the greater part of the time, in a flood of tears, and weeping aloud. I felt an ardency of soul to be, what I know not otherwise how to express, emptied and annihilated; to lie in the dust, and to be full of Christ alone; to love him with a holy and pure love; to trust in Him; to live upon Him; to serve and follow Him; and to be perfectly sanctified and made pure, with a divine and heavenly purity.”

Also he testifies that he had “many times, had a sense of the glory of the Third Person in the Trinity, in His office of Sanctifier; in His Holy operations, communicating divine light and life to the soul”:

“God in the communications of His Holy Spirit, has appeared as an infinite fountain of divine glory and sweetness; being full and sufficient to fill and satisfy the soul; pouring forth itself in sweet communications, like the sun in its glory, sweetly and pleasantly diffusing light and life.” – Jonathan Edwards (Works I, p xiii)

Witnessing

I have spoken in a previous post about Guilt-free Witnessing and of the need to “walk” before we “talk”, i.e. our lives need to be living out the message of gospel before we open our mouths.
By this, I don’t mean our lives need to be perfect; but at least they need to be consistent. This is far more important than anything you might pick up in a “How to witness” class.

Most important of all, is our walk with the Lord.
I mean when we “walk in the Spirit” (Gal 5:16), loving God our Father and our Saviour, Jesus Christ: Him “whom having not seen you love; and though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory.” (1 Peter 1:8)
How can we not “talk” of Him, if we “walk” with Him in love.

When commanded by the authorities to be silent, the apostles replied boldly: “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:19-20)
You couldn’t shut them up.
I am continually rebuked by this.

If, in my attempt to share the gospel, someone asked me, “But, who is God? What is God?” what would I say?
Would I fumble around trying to remember what they taught me in my last “How to witness” class?

Or would I spontaneously come out with something like: “God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth” – and rejoice in every word I spoke!

Would I unashamedly burst forth – as David did (a thousand years before he witnessed “God demonstrate His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”):

I love the Lord, my strength…
The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer;
My God, my strength, in whom I will trust;
My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
…I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised.

John Newton

Let me conclude with the poem by John Newton that Tim Challies put up this week:

’Tis a point I long to know,
Oft it causes anxious thought;
Do I love the Lord, or no?
Am I His, or am I not?

If I love, why am I thus?
Why this dull and lifeless frame?
Hardly, sure, can they be worse,
Who have never heard His name!

Could my heart so hard remain,
Prayer a task and burden prove;
Every trifle give me pain,
If I knew a Saviour’s love?

When I turn my eyes within,
All is dark, and vain, and wild;
Filled with unbelief and sin,
Can I deem myself a child?

If I pray, or hear, or read,
Sin is mixed with all I do;
You that love the Lord indeed,
Tell me: Is it thus with you?

Yet I mourn my stubborn will,
Find my sin a grief, and thrall;
Should I grieve for what I feel,
If I did not love at all?

Could I joy His saints to meet,
Choose the ways I once abhorred,
Find, at times, the promise sweet,
If I did not love the Lord?

Lord, decide the doubtful case!
Thou who art Thy people’s sun;
Shine upon Thy work of grace,
If it be indeed begun.

Let me love Thee more and more,
If I love at all, I pray;
If I have not loved before,
Help me to begin today.